We had a guest speaker today who shared the experience of launching a magazine. Amanda Nachman, creator of College Magazine, described her early magazine career running to local pizza shops selling ads. She said local advertising was the magazine's chief source of revenue at the beginning. As publisher and editor, she was the one responsible for selling the ads, and she had the final say on editing the stories.
The general question raised here is if these ads had an influence on what was being written in the articles of the magazine and if the magazine sometimes was biased toward those restaurants or other local businesses if it was the chief way of bringing in money.
Newspapers had a long history of separating the business side of the operation from the editorial, to help allay fears of bias.
The lines have been murkier for small start-ups, and they have grown murkier still as content has moved online.
Related story from AJR: Navigating the Future
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